We're Just a Wild and Crazy Ride!
We got another mention in the Daily Camera. Seems people just can’t get enough of our wild side.
A spin on the wild side: Banjo Billy a Boulder sight
Matt Branaugh
Posted: 05/31/2005 12:00:00 AM MDT
Take a 36-foot school bus, strip off the roof, bust out the passenger windows, strap some wooden fence pickets on the sides, and add a stereo and microphone system, and what you get isn’t really like anything Boulder has seen.
And we’re talking about Boulder, so that’s saying a lot.
Soon, you may be able to check it out for yourself. Banjo Billy’s Bus Tours is rolling out, bringing a tour that weaves throughout the city every day during the summer months. The company is in the process of lining up a license from the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, the state agency that oversees commercial transportation.
Customers will get an 80-minute tour highlighting history and mystery, voting to hear which of the 10 ghost stories and five murder tales – sans JonBenet Ramsey, since all of them pre-date 1966 – available from a hillbilly tour guide while viewing notable historical sites, the Mork & Mindy house included, of course.
“I wanted it to reek of Boulder,” says John Georgis, a Boulder resident who spent six years developing the idea before finally deciding to go after it. “Anything fancy wouldn`t work because Boulder is more organic. It`s eclectic.”
For Banjo Billy`s, eclectic might be an understatement.
In 1999, Georgis trekked through Europe solo, using bus tours as opportunities to meet people. More often than not, he says he endured a lot of boring ones.
“I found what people were looking for was something educational, but mostly entertaining,” he says.
After he returned, he bounced around the idea for a zany-styled bus tour with some friends. Georgis, who mines data for marketing companies for a living, kicked around a couple of concepts.
A trolley car? Too bland. A log cabin bus? Too heavy for wheels. Then came the idea of throwing up fencing on the sides of a bus, ripping off the roof and replacing it with a pitched tin roof, effectively creating a look unmistakably hillbilly.
In February, Georgis headed to Illinois and shelled out $6,000 to buy an 11-year-old bus. He drove it back and got to work, calling upon his girlfriend Beth Godden to help with design.
The party starts outside – with mini-disco balls dangling in front of the bus` warning lights and a rubber chicken strapped to the roof by a string of Christmas lights – and continues inside, where Willie Nelson blares on the stereo, more lights hang from the windows and an Egyptian tapestry drapes across the roof with a large disco ball.
Then there`s the seating. Georgis kept six of the original bus seats and had Godden re-cover them. He yanked out the rest, replacing them with four recliners, one couch and four horse saddles perched atop separate sawhorses. In all, he can seat 28 people.
Georgis leaned heavily on the Carnegie Library, as well as the work of local authors Silvia Pettem, Roz Brown and Ann Alexander Leggett, to compile the history. He hired two Boulder Valley School District bus drivers. He also has three tour guides, including himself, to help with the work load.
Georgis is working on partnerships with local retailers and hotels, and already has nailed down one with the Boulder Outlook Hotel & Suites.
“They`ve been great in their marketing and they`ve been proactive,” says Dan King, co-owner and “Ambassador of Cool” at Boulder Outlook. “It sounds like a cool idea.”
Banjo Billy`s has done a few runs with local groups already. Revenue is coming in, which is good news, considering the insurance costs more per month than what he paid for the bus, Georgis says. But it`s worth it – and it`s been fun.
“We need something to keep Boulder weird,” he says.
“A Spin On the Wild Side” – Daily Camera (Boulder Dirt)
The "Dirt" on Banjo Billy
Check it out! The Daily Camera did a profile on us!
On the bus: Taking a spin on Banjo Billy’s hillbilly contraption
Daily Camera staff
Posted: 10/05/2005 12:00:00 AM MDT
As a Boulder native, I just had to check out the hillbilly bus that’s been driving around Boulder all summer, offering tours of my hometown.
So on a recent Saturday, I put John Georgis, owner of Banjo Billy’s Bus Tours, to a test: Could he really tell me things I don’t know about a town I’ve lived in for 22 years – and could he successfully entertain me on a Saturday morning after a night of drinking?
With that in mind, I find myself waiting for the bus, with its trademark peaked tin roof, to come rolling up to the front of the Hotel Boulderado, the pick-up point for all Banjo Billy’s tours. As the bus rumbles down the street, I can’t help but wonder whether it’s going to break down. It has the essence of a decaying shack.
“The insurance on this is more than my mortgage,” Georgis admits to me later.
Georgis has converted an old school bus by boarding up the sides with wood fencing, adding the roof and even placing antlers and a dangling rubber chicken at the front.
The bus drives up, and Georgis, aka Banjo Billy, opens the door and, coffee in hand, enthusiastically asks me to come aboard.
The first thing you encounter when you step inside the bus are four saddle seats, but, since it’s early, I settle into a large armchair rather than straddle a saddle.
Dressed in Converse shoes, orange-tinted sunglasses and a secondhand jacket that matches the armchairs in the bus, Georgis explains that the two chairs and the so-called “death couch” in the back came from the Salvation Army. Georgis’ girlfriend, Beth Godden, helped him cover them.
The result is an eclectic mix of decorating styles, where no two seats are the same, the ceiling is draped with a tapestry, there’s a disco ball hanging from the center and a gorilla and fake roses adorn the front of the bus.
Georgis shows me that his bus even comes equipped with a stereo that plays banjo music.
“The problem with naming your company Banjo Billy is you have to play banjo music,” he jokes.
Backstory
Before the tour begins, Georgis tells me how his company came into existence. He says it began on a whim when, after traveling through Europe and going on bus tours to meet fellow Americans, he realized that Boulder could use a tour like that.
“Really, I was just meeting people to drink beers with,” he says of his bus travels through Europe.
The Colorado native thought Boulder was the ideal place for a bus tour because of the unique people, “cool artist community” and out-of-town tourists that come through. Georgis, who was born in Pueblo, came to Boulder for a job and has been here for 13 years.
Georgis got his undergraduate degree in business administration at Colorado State University, and he jokes that one of the unique things about Boulder is that most people are educated and, in his case, it takes a degree to be able to drive a bus.
“My parent’s are very proud,” he says.
Georgis decided to create a more entertaining version of the bus tours he took in Europe, and bought a used 1996 school bus off eBay for $6,000 in February. He purchased a one-way ticket to Moline, Ill., to pick up the bus. Georgis says that’s when reality of his decision sunk in.
“I realized I either had to buy the bus or hitchhike the way back,” he says.
Georgis decided to use the bus’ ample space to pick up any hitchhikers he came across on the way back.
“I thought I’d drive along and have this whole Jack Kerouac experience, but for 1,000 miles, I did not see a one,” he says.
Disenchanted, Georgis parked the bus in the snow outside of his home. He says the yellow of the bus reflected into his house.
“I was feeling jaundice,” he says, “I was thinking, ‘Oh, what have I done?’”
He credits his girlfriend’s encouragement for helping get him started on the Astroturf that makes up the floor of the bus.
With the help of a welder, Georgis cut the top off the school bus and installed the tin roof. Georgis then tried to convert the bus into a log cabin, but the logs were so heavy it caused the bus to tip. Instead, Georgis used fencing to line the walls.
Georgis says a friend told him that the bus “doesn’t look like a log cabin, it looks like a hillbilly shack. Are you Banjo Billy?”
Georgis accepted the title, and Banjo Billy’s Bus Tours was born.
In business
Equipped with a luxury limousine license and a sightseeing permit, Georgis was ready to get his business started. He says he had problems with the logistics of where he could load and unload and lucked out when the Boulderado let him park in front of the hotel.
“I was naive about how this would take off,” Georgis admits.
Despite the slow start, Georgis says September was a busy month, and he’s hoping October will be even better. He’s doing a special October tour with 90 minutes of ghost stories, and is planning a future event where 100 percent of the proceeds would go to the Boulder Humane Society.
Georgis plans to run tours through November and says that the currently open-air bus has windows that can be rolled down.
For now, Georgis relies on his Web site as the prime source of business, as well as word-of-mouth and the fliers he puts in hotel lobbies. The 28-seat bus also is hired out for private parties and weddings.
On the bus
My tour takes off early on Saturday, at noon instead of 2 p.m., with a group of people from Michigan. According to Georgis, the 6 p.m. tour is sometimes a rowdier crowd.
The tour winds around downtown Boulder, University Hill and Chautauqua, and, at various stops, Georgis asks the people to vote on either a crime, ghost or history story. My group continually votes for the gruesome, R-rated ghost stories, and I learn about more than just the haunted tower at Macky Auditorium, but also stories related to the Boulderado, the Trident and a long-ago lynching.
All of Georgis’ stories date back to 1966 or earlier, leaving out the JonBenet Ramsey killing because he says he doesn’t want to make money off such a recent tragedy.
Georgis says he has been asked – and even bribed $20 – to tell the JonBenet story and show the slain 6-year-old’s 15th Street home, but he always refuses.
The tour used to include the “Mork and Mindy” house, but it no longer does because the woman who lives there asked Georgis not to drive by anymore.
“She was so nice about it I said yes,” he says.
So without two of Boulder’s most infamous stories, Georgis has to dig deep for his tales, collecting his ghost stories from the books “Haunted Boulder One and Two” by Roz Brown and Ann Alexander Leggett, his crime stories from “Behind the Badge” by Silvia Pettem and his history stories from research at the Carnegie Library.
In between stories, Georgis entertains by using his multi-functional horn to quack at hippies, moo at college girls and whiny at hikers.
“I got my money’s worth the first day,” he says of the horn. “It just keeps giving.”
As we drive through the Hill, people who have seen the bus drive by their homes before shout “Banjo Billy!,” and, in response, Georgis and the Michigan tourists respond, “Yee-haw!”
“The other day, a guy ran outside of his house in his whitie tighties yelling ‘Banjo Billy!’,” Georgis says. “I had to give him free tickets for his enthusiasm.”
It’s apparent from the response of people to the bus that Banjo Billy has become part of what makes Boulder unique, and it’s his enthusiasm toward Boulder that saves the tour from being another boring tourist trap.
“I’ve got the best job in the world,” Georgis sings as we drive through the University of Colorado.
After the ride, we’re dropped off in front of the Boulderado, and as I thank Georgis and head off to find Fast Eddie’s in the midst of Boulder’s Fall Fest, I realize that not only did he tell me something about Boulder that I didn’t know and took my mind off of my hangover, he renewed my love for this unusual town I call home.
“On the Bus” – Daily Camera (Boulder Dirt)
Super Spooky Rides
“The only tour ranked 3.5 ghosts out of 4 for Halloween Tours” – Rocky Mountain News
